Random Comic Review 11: Marvel Masterworks: Thor vol 2

With Lee and Kirby as permanent creators Thor takes off here. The Thor/Don Blake/Jane Foster is still pretty derivative of Superman, but the touches of mythology are what makes this shine. Highlights include Odin teleporting every single man, woman, and child off of the Earth (!) so they won't be injured when he, Thor and Balder fight Surtur. That is boss as hell.

Mr. Hyde and Cobra keep showing up, and Thor emotes with the best of them over his love for Jane. It's cheesy, yeah, but that earnestness is part of the appeal.

8 out of 10 Lame Doctors who can become Thunder Gods but always change back at the most inconvient times

P.I.G. Guide to the Middle East

I thought this book would be terrible going in to it, a Fox News version of the Middle East. It wasn't quite as bad as all that, but not something I would ever recommend to anyone. The book starts on the first page with Strawman fallacies about traditional right wing bogeymen "the left", "political correctness", and goes on to the media, academics, Michael Moore and so on.
This is clearly not an academic work. There are no footnotes, endnotes or a bibliography. The author never bothers to define what he means by PC, nor does he provide any examples. Basically, anything he disagrees with is "Politically Correct" or "liberal". Obnoxiously labelled side bars tell us about "Books You Aren't Supposed to Read", who is telling us not to read them again? What exactly did the media do that is so dastardly? The whole thing is laced with strawmen about all the same tired targets of right wing attacks. Bleargh.

The main argument of the book is that the Middle East was better off under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, which kept the people ignorant and standards of living low. But at least there was stability. The main watchword here seems to be stability. But again, he never bothers to tell us what he means by stability. The author also dismisses those who would blame the West for the problems of the Middle East, but then goes on to detail all the blunders made by Churchill dividing up the Middle East at the 1921 Cairo Conference. If he wanted to claim that the West is partially responsible that might make sense. But he tells us that A. The West is not responsible at all and B. Here's all the ways that England screwed up the Middle East.

There are other contradictions, he decries Middle Eastern countries turning to socialist style governments, but never mentions how socialistic Israel is (Israel has something like 10% private land ownership). Egypt's army during the Yom Kippur war is described as being "poorly trained" in one section, but described as well trained in another. Despite admonishing Arab regimes for following western trends, the author chides the Shah for not following more free-market policies. He blames Carter for "losing Iran". Losing it? To who? The Iranians? For shame they should take over their own country! And yes, the Ayatollah hated us, maybe because we destroyed their last government?
He freely describes Saddam's atrocities, but then forgives Reagan for supporting him, by comparing American support for Saddam to the Allied support for Stalin during WW2 against Nazi Germany. Key differences for that analogy include the fact that the Allies, including Russia, had all been militarily attacked by the Axis powers. Nazi Germany had in fact declared war on America and was actively trying to take over Europe and Africa. And their partner had attacked Pearl Harbor. Iran, on the other hand, attacked no one. There were hostages taken, yes. And for that we should sponsor Saddam to kill hundreds of thousands of Iranians?

A better analogy would be if Japan had never attacked the US, and after Operation Barbarossa we threw our support 100% behind Hitler. Like the USSR, Iran was our ideological enemy we had interfered with decades before, but that currently posed no real threat. Hitler, like Saddam, liked filling mass graves full of innocent people. But Saddam was ok for that period, because he supported stability.

This mysterious stability never really gets defined. We learn that Assad under Syria is acceptable because he promoted stability, despite his massacres against his own people, with up to 50,000 or more innocents dead. Apparently stability does not include peace, otherwise tens of thousands of dead innocents would seem to discount it. Stability seems to be code word for "Supporting American Interests", or at the very least, not opposing them actively.
There is a chapter on the occupation of Iraq, where we learn that George Bush is an idealistic liberal do-gooder. The author dismisses out of hand any concept of Bush invading Iraq for anything other than an intense love of human freedom. The fact that his first adventure into spreading beloved, sweet, delicious freedom happened to be in the most strategically important area of the world seems to be a wacky coincidence. Bush Jr's main fault then, is that he just loves freedom too much! Much better books have been written about the invasion of Iraq, including Fiasco, No End in Sight and Imperial Life in the Emerald City.
The author repeatedly disparages the idea of Middle Eastern democracy outside of Israel, but does note that Iran under a moderate, Khatami, wanted to make peace with America. America spurned him, and a hardliner took over. If democracy is so untenable, how did such a nice guy end up in charge of Iran? If the US had taken a stance other than "Always act like an asshole to Iran, no matter what" Khatami may have gotten some of his reforms done. Or at the very least, Ahmadinejad might not be in power now.

Israel is presented as an unabashed force for good. The history provided is largely dealing with their Wars, the actual plight of Palestinians or Arabs inside Israel is given almost no mention. Any massacres or atrocities carried out be Israel or their proxies goes unmentioned. The invasions of Lebanon are almost completely skipped over, except for one mention which he blames on Jimmy Carter. If Carter had not forced Israel and Egypt to come to a peace agreement, the two countries would still have their armies staring at each other over the Sinai, and thus Israel would not have been able to invade Southern Lebanon. Thus, the Israeli-Lebanon war was Jimmy Carter's fault.

Saudi Arabia is held up as the ideal agent to introduce peace and stability, and although there are certainly worse countries, there are certainly a lot better. Saudi Arabia has problems with poverty, slavery, women's rights and actively promotes extremism around the world.But democracy is always worse, we're assured.

The author seems to know his history for the most part, but is way too caught up in dissing on right wing targets in strawman attacks, and goes by the annoying habit of calling anyone who does anything he disagrees with "liberal." Oh yeah, Henry Kissinger, renown war criminal, is hailed as a genius.

Random Comic Review: 10: Marvel Masterworks: Thor volume 1

I've never really been a big fan of Thor. Still, one cannot judge something until you have read it. So I cracked open the first volume of Thor stories from Marvel Masterworks. What we have seems to be Marvel's answer to Superman. Unlike Superman, who exploded right out of the gate, the first set of Thor stories get off to a pretty rocky start.

The concept itself seems pieced together from a variety of other comics. The Don Blake-Jane Foster-Thor relationship is straight from Superman, and indeed there are adventures that end in a panel where Jane says something like "If only Thor were here now!" *sigh*, and then Don Blake thinks to himself "If only you knew!". That exact panel will feel very familiar to any reader of Golden Age Superman stories.

The idea of transforming from weakly to superbeing and back will seem familiar to any readers of Captain Marvel, and even Thor's look seems reminiscent of previous comic book Thors.

Here is Grant Ferrel, a golden age hero who is granted the power of Thor by Odin:

The stories have plot deficiencies familiar to the first Superman stories, actually. This ultra powerful being, after dealing with some aliens (in Silver Age Marvel comics, different races of aliens took turns invading Earth every other day) he deals with some thugs and common criminals. The God of Thunder fighting some gangsters, I wonder who shall win? There's also some terribly dated battles against communists, who sort of dress like Nazis, and thus maybe earn the title of Commie-Nazis.

The artists and co-writers rotate in and out. The worst story involves some half-hearted looking art by a guy named Al Hartley. Shape shifting aliens come to Earth, and then attempt to drown the world in chaos by painting bridges with polka dots and letting cars drive on the sidewalks. Thor is captured by being stunned by the side of their space ship. Not sure how they planned to take over Earth? By tricking everyone into falling over and landing on their ships? Thor sends them packing by throwing their leader into space, and their alien fleet chases after him to catch him. Either Thor can throw many times the speed of light, or these aliens of the week have some real crappy space ships.

In another story, Loki successfully tricks Thor into giving up his hammer, and then goes around turning people's cars into ice cream. The horror! The best story is probably the one with the Radioactive Man, not coincidentally drawn by Jack Kirby. Here we have a villain worthy of Thor! There's a certain symmetry in having an ancient God fight a man imbued with radiation, who explodes like Hiroshima when defeated.

The villains start to pick up a bit. We get Sardu, who looks like the guy inside those coin operated fortune telling machines. Merlin makes an appearance, looking like a lost D&D LARPer. Other than the Radioactive Man story, the other highlights are the Lee and Kirby back up stories featuring Tales of Asgard. Only towards the end does some of the Silver Age Marvel goodness start to shine through. After cycling through 3 or 4 co-writers and different artists, we finally settle down to Lee and Kirby.

P.S. I should note that although at some point it is revealed that Don Blake is actually just Thor cast onto Earth to learn humility, the idea of a regular person literally transforming into a mythological God could be very interesting. The stories never really seem clear on what is really happening though, as Blake and Thor are clearly the same person, and Thor is shown to exist in the past before Blake would ever have been born.

P.P.S There is a particularly amusing panel where Jane imagines her life together with Thor, with her shining his hammer and ironing his cape. Way to dream big, Jane.

Rating: 5 out of 10 Damsels in Distress

Random Comic Review: 9: Batgirl: Silent Running

Reviewing a comic like this is more of a review of the character than the story. Is the new Batgirl a viable addition to the Bat family? I say yes, most definetely.

Cassandra Cain is a martial arts master who can only speak a few words. Her adopted father raised her without teaching her language, so that the parts of her brain that command understanding kinesthetics would compensate and she would be able to "read" body language. This makes her a world class martial artist.

In really, this would leave some hopelessly screwed up (see: City of Glass by Paul Auster). Cass seems to be a functioning person, albeit a mute one. We learn she has killed before, which is the ultimate no-no in Batman's world. At the end of the story, as a gunman faces her, with another enemy behind her, she charges the gunman head on to avoid him accidentally hitting the other bad guy standing behind her, which might happen if she jumped away. This earns her Batman's respect, and is admittedly pretty bad ass.

The character? Promising. Visually, the cartoony style leaves her as a dark little ninja elf striking throughout the city. The stories themselves are ok. Rating is 5 out of 10 Batgirls.

Random Comic Review 8: Batman Dark Detective

I'll admit it took me two tries to get through this. The first attempt ended after a series of lame Joker puns and a non lethal hand buzz seemed boring and un-interesting. It's a good thing I gave it another shot.

Dark Detective presents definitive takes on various Bat characters, including Batman, Scarecrow, Joker and Two-Face. The story involves Bruce's old girlfriend Silver St. Cloud coming back into his life, and is over all approximately 1 to 2 million times better than Kevin Smith's Widening Gyre which has a similar plot hook. I'll also be honest and admit that I am not familiar with Engelhart's and Rogers' previous Batman stories.

So anyway, the version of the Joker Engelhart presents gradually grew on me. In between lame jokes, he commits senseless murder, claims to be running for governor, and decides to torture Silver at the drop of a hat. Joker's house as a death trap like the real life H.H. Holmes is so obvious I'm shocked I've never seen anyone do it before.

Rogers art started off looking like a copy of P. Craig Russel, but I grew impressed at his style switch when doing a GA themed flashback sequence and his use of negative space between panels.

I didn't feel like the Joker running for Governor thing got enough play, and the abrupt ending felt like a cop out. I did understand what he was doing with the Joker towards the end though, and the writing of Scarecrow, Batman and Two Face was all top notch. I would recommend it to any Batman fan.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10 Bat drones.

Random Comic Review: 7: All Star Batman and Robin

It's Frank Miller, writing Batman. What's not to like? Well, first of all, this is definetly more in the vein of DKSA not DKR or Year One. Batman is a cackling rage monster who probably kills dozens of people. We never see him killing anyone directly, but he lights people on fire and crashes cop cars and so on.

Wonder Woman is man hating hyper feminist, who inexplicably still wears her stilleto heels. Hal Jordan is a moron. This is Frank Miller's special version of DC where everyone is angry and violent, or enormously stupid.

Although the story is ostensibly about Batman and Robin, we get an entire issue devoted to Black Canary, who goes around beating up random people and taking their money. The only person who isn't on the verge of a psychotic breakdown is Batgirl, who makes a small appearance only.

All Star Joker is a date rapist/serial killer with a yakuza style tatoo on his entire back. That kinda works, as I like the Joker being different in every story. The Batman works if you are ok with a Batman that makes Dick Grayson eat rats and gets petulant when people keep telling him the Batmobile is a "queer" name for his car.

The Jim Lee art is standard Jim Lee. The first thing we see is some super gratitous panels of Vicki Vale in her underwear for no apparent reason. I can't decide what amount of this whole comic is self parody. We've got scantily clad babes, repeated little staccato lines (Dick Grayson. Age Twelve) and gleeful ultra violence.

What I can say is that it clearly accomplishes what it sets out to do: it's insane, excessive and over the top in every way. Supposedly this is meant to take place in the same world as Miller's other works, which makes no sense as the Batman of Year One and DKR is a fundementally different person that the Batman in All Star and DKSA. DKSA Batman can work as an aged Batman who is losing it, but putting this chronologically between Year One and DKR makes no sense.

In DKSA Dick becomes a serial killer, which sort of makes sense with his portrayal here. What doesn't make sense is DKR Batman's refusal to kill the Joker, but his over the top violence against corrupt cops and random street thugs in All Star. This whole Insane Batman thing could almost work as a modern spin on Golden Age Batman, who wasn't afraid to gun down bad guys in his very early appearances. Or maybe as an Ultimate Batman.

Rating: I have no idea, honestly. It is what it is. ???? out of ????

Random Comic Review: 6: The Ultimates volumes 1 and 2

The Ultimates is an attempt to create a new Marvel universe that is consistent and conceptually modern, not tied to previous continuties. This is the first Ultimate story I've read. My reaction to it is mixed.

I like the portrayal of most of the characters, the overall setting works but something is off about the feel of the whole thing. Captain America works as a true fish out of water. He lives in a run down terrible neighborhood because it's where he's always lived and goes out to re-buy his old record collection. Millar emphasizes a little of a good old boy aesthetic, but I don't think he overdoes it. Wasp is a cool asian chick, and is better than most any version of the character. The Wasp is a classic token female character, her treatment at the hands of different writers varies wildly. The original Lee/Kirby was pretty laughable, always swooning over shopping and how hot Thor is.

Giant Man is a straight up a-hole wife beater. If I was a big fan of Henry Pym, this would be upsetting. But I'm not so I just accepted it. Iron Man is largely unchanged as far as I can tell. Thor is a Nord hippy, asking Bush to double the foreign aid budget in exchange for taking on the Hulk. Thor works as a detached critic of the Modern world, as he is a god after all. I suppose you could take this the other way and have him obsessed with wenches and mead, but the cast already has enough d-bags.

Nick Fury looks just like Samuel L. Jackson, and also comments that Samuel L. Jackson should play him if they make a movie of their team. Other than his appearance, Nick Fury is pretty much just Nick Fury.

Anyway, Hulk goes on a rampage and it mentions some 300 people died. This is probably realistic for him going on a rampage in the middle of a crowded city. After they capture him, though, it brings up the morality of the Ultimates keeping him under wraps. No one seems bothered by just tossing him in a cell and hiding him from the public. Shouldn't they do something with him? He did just kill a bunch of people.

After the Hulk storyline, where the Ultimates only accomplishment is defeating one of their own team members had then hiding it from the public, there is the threat of a skrull invasion. We meet Black Widow and Hawkeye, who are old guard S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives. They run through an office building and blast white collar workers by the legion. There is a handwave that these are Skrulls who are infiltrating Earth. The nihilistic glee in mowing down all these unarmed people, bad guys or not, seemed weird to me.

Hawkeye and Widow are basically non-characters, we don't see too much of them. The Skrull Big Bad is a Nazi Cap fought in World War 2, a villain so generic I can't even remember his name. The good guys unleash the Hulk, and then have to take him down again. The idea that they have to release and the re-capture the Hulk makes sense. It still vaguely bothered me that no one really addresses how many people he's killed.

The whole thing feels a little too militarstic and nationalistic for me to be comfortable with. It wants to be this straight up action epic, but also has all these screwed up characters. Does it want to explore that? Or just have alien fleets getting smashed? Millar tries to split the difference. I feel like the concept is solid, but Millar's execution feels uneven.

Rating is 6 out of 10 shapeshifting alien Nazis.

Random Comic Review: 5: American Vampire vol 1

I've heard a lot of buzz from Snyder over American Vampire. But, to be honest I feel pretty bored with the vampire trend. I read this only because of my library's limited selection meant I ended up with it. I was pleasantly surprised.

There are some storytelling elements traditionally associated with horror fiction, and this first gave me pause. But again, I was pleasantly surprised. The title character and the "star" is the bad guy, Skinner Sweets. In horror franchises, this often means that the good guys are just fodder, disposable idiots to feed the bad guy.

A problem with Batman movies, which could have happened here, is that the villains are always more interesting. Who wants to watch Christian Bale growl at people while you have Heath Ledger being insane and awesome?

American Vampire deftly avoids both of these. Sweets is a pretty minor character, and actually serves a fairly benevolent role in the main story. The main character, Pearl, skips over the "ohmygodamIreallyavampire" stuff and embarks on a quest to enact vengenance on her enemies. We feel her rage at the wealthy Hollywood elites who prey on young girls. Indeed, there are missing girls from this time period who likely fell victim to lecherous Hollywood types.

The male lead feels a bit obvious, though. "I love you and I was in the army so I can help you kill bad guys!" How convienvent.

In the back up story, I was surrpised again by Stephen King's writing. I was afraid that moving from novel to comic would mean an overly wordy writing style. Such is not the case. While reading it, King deftly shifts the audience from cheering for Skinner against the vampire elites, to hoping the sheriff and his crew kill him once and for all. Because this section is a flashback, we know they fail. But I found myself interested in knowing how they fail. What exactly would happen?

I quite enjoyed American Vampire, and I plan on reading the rest of it if I ever get my hands on it. It deftly moves in and around horror conventions to make a compelling vampire story. Bravo.

I rate it 8.5 out of 10 American Vampires.

Random Comic Review: 4: Astonishing X-men 4: Unstoppable

Well, Whedon's run is over and I ended up with a lot of questions. The X-men are battling hostile forces on an alien world, which is pretty much their standard way to spend an afternoon. Wolverine and Armor team up, apparently making her Wolverine's latest teenage girl sidekick.

There are genuinely touching moments. Colussus consoling Ord that he saved his world. Kitty trapped inside the bullet. Scott and Emma being in love. More that feels unresolved, though. What happened to Breakworld after they left? How did that bullet travel to Earth so damn fast? What became of Danger and Emma's bargain re: Xavier?

Whedon's writing is fun, and Cassaday's art is great, but I think this series could have benefited from some editorial wrangling. It feels like there should be a part 5 or something. The story seems to be three or so unrelated storylines that just happen to bounce together. Nova/Emma's play against the X-men, the "cure", and Breakworld. We never see the cure mentioned again, which disapointed me.

Overall, I'm going to rate it 7 out of 10 Kitty Prydes. I ended up with a deeper appreciation of Kitty. I need to figure out when she comes back!

Random Comic Review: 3: Astonishing X-men 3

So the White Queen finally betrays the X-men and the Hellfire club seen at the end of volume 2 shows up. I like to think I'm a reasonably smart person, but I had to page through it again to understand what happened.

The Hellfire club stomps the X-men and Cyclops rallies them at the last minute to defeat Nova. All the Hellfire members are just psychic projections of Cassandra Nova, who exists just a widdle bit in Emma's mind. So Emma brought Kitty in to the X-men knowing she would defeat her, and betrayed the X-men knowing they would battle through it anyway.

At least that's how I followed it. I guess at the end Nova gets banished. I'm not sure how Cyclops makes thought projections disappear by shooting them? Did they leave the Cassandra larva laying on the floor at the end?

I liked having Kitty rock the White Queen, and I like Whedon's handle on Cyclops, the "boring" X-men who actually has a fair number of issues. Still, the whole thing feels a bit jumbled. I rate it 6 out of 10 imaginary White Queens.

Random Comic Review: 2: Astonishing X-men volume 2

The second part of Whedon's X-men story starts with our guys attacking a giant monster to try and drum up good PR. The concept of the X-men trying to increase their public good will is a good idea. But we quickly move from that to the X-men getting attacked by their own danger room. Apparently, the Danger Room is actually a sentient computer program that Xavier enslaved.

I like the growth we've had to Xavier over the years. He's a sort of ruthless idealist. We spend most of the rest of it with the X-men slugging it out with Danger, the sentient robot with various and sundry powers. It's well written, but not particularly enthralling. I rate it 6 out of 10 sentient evil female computers.

Random Comic Review: 1: Astonishing X-Men volume 1: Gifted

Joss Whedon, he of Buffy fame, writing the X-Men! What could be better? The art by Cassaday (he of Planetary fame) is of course awesome and glorious.

The story picks up basically the day after Grant Morrison's New X-men run ends. I was surprised how directly the one leads into the other. Anyway, a scientist has developed a "cure" for being a mutant, which cuts to the core of the X-men. Beast and Wolverine fight it out over the cure, in fact. Beast of course is torn by the prospect of being human again. Whedon delivers fun dialogue, something he is good at.

Kitty Pryde is back on the team, along with her pet dragon. Kitty is a great character, part grizzled veteran, part wide eyed newbie. The plot sort of fizzles, as the issue of the cure is not adequately resolved, but I'm assuming Whedon comes back to it later. I will rate it 7 out of 10 pet dragons.